This Ian Boyd article is an excellent reminder of how Georgia’s defense had its hands full with Baker Mayfield in the Rose Bowl. Whatever you think of the guy personally, he was astonishing to watch in that game, both early when it seemed he could do nothing wrong, and then later in the fourth quarter, when his team was reeling a bit and he drove the team for the score to tie it at 38. (Check out that back shoulder fade he threw to Lamb in the face of good coverage that Boyd shows. That is one helluva throw, friends.)

Statistically, though, he had an interesting day. In terms of Georgia’s defense, it wasn’t their worst performance of the year in terms of passer rating, as both Lock and Stidham had better days. But from Mayfield’s perspective, it was his worst of the season. Yeah, he still managed a 147.74, which isn’t exactly bad, but considering that he cleared a 200 passer rating in half of his starts, by his standards it was definitely an off day.

In fact, before the Rose Bowl, Mayfield was on track to set a passer rating record by averaging 200 for a season, something no starting quarterback had ever accomplished. He finished at 198.92.

I can’t say that Smart and Tucker painted their masterpiece in a game in which the opponent scored 48 points, but considering whom they were up against, it wasn’t too shabby, either.

Saban added more depth to the conversation by adding this, which is important to the whole idea behind the creation of “Bama Cuts:”

“But I still think there’s mis(information) about Alabama football. There’s mis(information) out there that people get told they can’t play here, people get told things that really aren’t exactly right.”

You can almost see the self-awareness on screen as Saban speaks. A man who supposedly doesn’t even know how to send a text let alone use “Miss Siri” understands how negative recruiting is effecting his classes. What better way to combat that than with a new recruiting tool that pulls back the curtain on a man and a program that focuses inward exclusively.

If you’re a ‘Bama fan, some people use recruiting tools and some people are recruiting tools.

He also pushed back on how his comments a week earlier were portrayed when he said that Fields and the other freshmen were “hitting the wall,” during spring drills. He thinks some took that to mean that only Fields was being described that way.

“That kid is really not like that,” Smart said. “He’s very intuitive, he’s very smart, he picks things up well. So, that was like, someone blew that way out of the water. When I say, ‘hitting the wall,’ I mean there’s times where they kind of don’t do as well as maybe we’d like them to do. I was really talking about the other freshmen, not so much him. He didn’t have his best day after that either. But this week he’s been very efficient, made good decisions.”

On the other hand, this description on how some of Fields’ game might be held back in practice is pretty funny.

Fields is known to have an ability to make big plays with his feet—he was credited with 2,096 rushing yards in two years as a high school starter–but just like in other practices, the quarterbacks are not getting tackled in scrimmages.

That means a play he may have turned into a big gain will get whistled dead.

“So a lot of that falls on me and an official,” Smart said. “I try to be as fair as I can, but I get a bunch of shenanigans from the offensive sideline if I call it sack. They all disagree with me so I try to put it on the official.”